Sweden meets York on this debut album from Helga. “Wrapped in Mist” passes through the lands of Swedish folk and progressive metal, with post-rock, black metal, pop and some cellos and violins thrown in.
A haunting female voice precedes a classic, dark progressive metal rhythm. The addition of the strings to the drifting voice enhances the heavenly air to “Skogen Mumlar” (The Forest Murmurs). The vocal performance adds a mystical feel, complementing the hard progressive element. “Burden” and “Water” have a similar atmosphere, but is more emotional and melancholic. The dreamy voice matches the deliberate instrumentals. As I listened to “Water”, I did reflect that beautiful as this was, it did seem to be drowning in its own lake of sorrow. “If Death Comes Now” starts along similar lines. There are no signs that Helga are going to get this melancholic mood over and done with. Yet musically and vocally speaking I cannot fault it. “If Death Comes Now” has a suitably pure guitar pattern before building up in a progressive post-rock style, which the vocalist adds purity and mysticism. “Farväl” (Farewell) starts off darkly and there’s even a ghastly, distant black metal scream as if this were an example of that genre from Norway in the 1990s. It takes us up a blind alley however as misty melancholy, aided by a violin section, returns. The blood-curdling scream comes back, and all in all I didn’t know what was supposed to be going on with this one.
“Alive Again” maintains the moodiness. The clouds darken during its course. Much of the album features the vocalist’s gymnastics, if I can call them that, to set the mood. “Vast and Wild” is typical in this regard. The instrumentals patter along in harmony. I read a description of this album in the accompanying publicity as “dirgeful lamentations of mortality and mental health, punctuated by formidable drums, spectral strings and chugging riffs”. It’s strange that the vocals don’t get mentioned as they’re hard to ignore. The thing is that whilst I can understand this description, the album seems to be an exercise in creating a range of moods in the way of a jamming session rather than a holistic entity. Songs are there and so are the techniques. Maybe Helga are trying to do too much and the songs find themselves getting lost. “Son en Trumme” (Like a Drum) starts in the usual melancholic acoustic fashion with the vocalist high in the clouds. This one, with the power of drums behind it, builds up into a strong, ethic-sounding folk piece. The transitions have air of Opeth about them. The black vocal comes in again but this time the framework is darker so it’s less incongruous than before. Even so, it still seems at odds with the earlier part of the song. Sad post-rock characterises “Mountain King”. On it goes dreamily. The way the vocalist delivers her lines this time reminded me very much of Katatonia’s Jonas Renske. It’s their finality of message in the delivery. Once again it’s a mixed bag of a song which doesn’t actually lose coherence but switches between moods and styles in a non-threatening way. Folk had been on the edge of my lips as a way to describe the style, and is present in its most manifest form on the title song, which closes the album. “Wrapped in Mist” goes through a number of iterations including another Opeth style passage and represents the hybrid nature that I found in this album as a whole.
“Wrapped in Mist” came across to me as an album of avant-garde folk. Atmospherically it’s dreamy with dark tinges. “Wrapped in Mist” is an apt title. I just found that musically this album tried to do too much, and for me the overall structure were a distraction from the evident vocal and instrumentally technical merit that Helga have as a band.
(6/10 Andrew Doherty)
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